


The Edge

by Solia



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst and Tragedy, Canon Compliant, F/M, Family Feels, Force Ghost(s), Redeemed Ben Solo, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-19
Updated: 2019-12-19
Packaged: 2021-02-24 15:25:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,307
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21860116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Solia/pseuds/Solia
Summary: When he's separated from Rey at the climax of their final battle, Ben finds himself broken, dying, hopeless... but not alone. Reylo. Major spoilers for Rise of Skywalker, do not read this unless you have seen the film.
Relationships: Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 28
Kudos: 126





	The Edge

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I do not own Star Wars or any of its characters. Disney owns all that and basically everything else cool. 
> 
> Author's notes: The end of an era! I watched the midnight premiere of The Rise of Skywalker last night, came home grinning, and now 23 hours later I find I've spent most of my day writing a Reylo/Ben-goes-in-peace fanfic no one asked for. It's rough and raw, for which I'm sorry if you discover errors I missed, but it needs to be online or I will pick over for it for days to come. Basically, this fic materialised on my mind this morning because my husband's only gripe upon leaving the cinema was "How come Kylo died? He was strong enough to drag himself back out of that hole." This fic gives him both a plausible explanation for how Ben climbed back up in his weakened state, and a cause of death. It's made me feel better to write it, and hope it's enjoyed by someone else out there, too! 
> 
> Please note I have only seen the film once so far and have only slept about three hours since then, and there may be some mismatches between this fic's account of the movie's climax and the actual scene. I look forward to your kind and constructive feedback :)

The fall feels like forever, but like all falls it’s swift and unexpected, and with a brutal crash of his weakened body against jutting stone somewhere halfway down, he knows there’s no way back from this one. The crevice through which he’s been thrown opens wide above him, the chaotic roar of a losing air battle raging even higher above, and it’s not rock bottom and he’s not dead yet but vague scan of his own systems says that’s just a matter of time.

Broken leg. Broken ribs. Dislocated shoulder. Spinal injury. Three burst blood vessels in the brain. The darkness spreading from the edge of his vision will envelop him shortly and the impending stroke will take him away from this place. From Rey.

No less than he deserves. But much, much less than she deserves. She’s going to die too – the Emperor’s power, fuelled by the life force stolen from the two of them, flares overhead, and she’s still up there, beyond the edge – but he doesn’t have the energy left to even get to his feet, let alone heal himself of these drastic injuries, climb out of this hole with his bare hands, and fight for her.

He is a failure, as he has always suspected, and he has failed her. She will die alone. Her fear realised.

His regret is all-consuming. Pain is a constant but Ben feels even that fade under the weight of this last unfulfilled wish. Lights sparkle at the periphery of what little vision still remains, and numbly, he acknowledges that the blood that escapes its vessels into his brain tissue has begun to impact his sensory processing. Palpatine ripped life and power from Rey in the same way, exerting massive and unnatural pressure on their physical bodies. Crushing. Twisting. Squeezing them dry. Does that mean she sees the little lights, too? Tiny stars, light from long, long ago and far, far away… And voices.

“Be with me…”

Her voice. He struggles to stay present, feeling an ache of desperation deep inside his soul. She doesn’t know what it took for him to get here, to do just as she asks. He wants nothing more. He has wanted nothing more for some time and taken too long to realise.

“Be with me…”

He knows she’s too far away for her voice to reach him; he knows he’s too far away to be heard even if he could reply. His fall was too long, his landing too rough, and there’s not enough left of him to return to her. But as consciousness slips and the tiny stars brighten against the distant grey of the temple’s crumbling stone ceiling, he can only think one urgent and wholehearted reply. _Yes! I will be with you_. However she needs, however she wants, he will be with her if he can. He should have been all along. And now it’s too late, for both of them, for everyone else.

“Be with me…”

 _I am with you_ , he thinks, the world around him giving way to endless stars, _always. You are not alone_.

“Neither are you.”

But it’s not her voice. The cool silver of the lightest loving touch runs down the length of his face and he fights to place it, to wake enough to know what’s going on. Oddly, he finds he has the energy to blink, and then to tilt his head, and then to focus his eyes. Small steps, but things he couldn’t have done two seconds earlier.

The face gazing into his own is achingly missed, perfect, beautiful, and transparent. Leia Organa Solo glimmers with a soft blue glow, and her hands, on his cheeks, glow brighter still. A faint thread of energy flows from her to him. It sustains him, just barely, but enough. His lungs draw more air. His heart keeps pumping. The blackness recedes from his sight.

The magic of a mother’s love, even across the void.

He means to be more formal and call her _mother_ but his voice cracks instead on “Mom?”

She’s dead. He knows it; he felt it, a blade through the chest an instant before Rey chased it with a real one. Hers did not sting as bad. Hers was also reversed. The loss of his mother cannot be reversed. No one can bring back the dead. Yet here she is. Smiling, softly.

“My baby boy,” she murmurs gently, all love, all warmth, the chaos of the galaxy, her Republic, tearing itself to shreds in the sky above so far away. His regret grows – he has failed Rey, he has failed himself, he has failed his mother, who gave him life. Who gives him life even now, tendrils of energy from what remains of her being. He feels the bleeding slow in his brain. He feels his awareness of the Force returning, though he doesn’t have the strength or purpose to grasp it. Distantly, through their once-powerful bond, he senses Rey.

“Mom.” Ben feels tears gather in his eyes, tears he should have let her see before now. Emotions he tried to control, to channel into something he is not. They sting; he blinks, wanting to see her. “I… I’m sorry.”

“I know. Me too.”

More of her faint energy slips from her to him. Is she dimming? Leia strokes his hair, one last indulgence, then looks up the rough rock walls of the canyon he has fallen down. His awareness has reopened and he hears the wild crack of electricity nearby, synced with blinding flashes too intense to be anything like a natural storm. Rey? No – there’s a maniacal laugh, and as he reconnects with the Force he feels the darkness that saturates this place he came to so willingly. And… there’s something else. Voices, indistinct, distant. _Rise_ , he thinks he hears.

Rey’s has gone quiet from his mind. _No_.

“Stop,” he begs his mother, weakly pulling away from her otherworldly touch. It hurts to break the contact but he’s not worthy, and someone else is. “Please… Help her.”

He knows every expression in Leia’s repertoire but it’s been a long time since he saw pride.

“Help her yourself,” she responds stubbornly. Ben feels like sobbing, if only he had the breath beneath his broken ribs to sustain it. He can’t help her. He is ruined, in body and spirit. His power has been drained. His brain is a ticking time bomb. He can’t even help himself. The edge of the crevice is too high up and he will never make it. But Leia knows tough love, and dishes it out now. “She needs you. Are you going to lie here and let everything be for nothing?”

 _Rise_.

He shakes his head and the tears run tracks down the sides of his face, into his hair. He doesn’t want to be this weak, but he’s got nothing left to give. His mother seems to hear his thoughts, and holds his face still as she looks deep into his eyes, eyes she gave him.

“We all have something to give,” she advises meaningfully. Her glow is definitely softening. He hates that she is diminishing, and knows it is into him that she is directing her energy. A waste. He is not worthy. “You have your life, don’t you? Your breath? Your body?”

He does, and he almost begins the same cyclic and broken thinking – his life is almost over, his breath is borrowed, his body is shattered. But he hears the words she does not say, and the murmurs in the Force, which has begun to swell, grow louder, clearer, though he still can’t make them out except _rise_. His mother does not have life, or breath, or a body, yet she is still giving. She is pure energy. She is keeping him alive.

With what he has left, what could he still give? Unexpected hope shoots through him. The voices become more frantic. Palpatine is at full strength and he is commanding the fate of the galaxy up there beyond the edge, with his helpless and perfect granddaughter lying undefended at his feet.

“Rey,” he whispers. Leia’s smile widens, and she takes his hand. It’s a soft and immaterial touch, like holding water. She’ll be gone before he can get a grip on her. But she’s here now.

“The power of the Jedi stand with her,” she tells him. “You should too.”

He nods, but even the slightest curl of his torso sends crippling pain shredding through his nerves, his damaged spine screaming, his broken ribs piercing organs.

“I can’t stand.” He is failing again. The voices quieten. Leia’s hand burns in his, briefly almost solid.

“You _can_ ,” she argues fiercely. “She _needs_ you to stand. She needs you to climb.”

 _Rise, Ben_. Who _is_ that?

“But how?” Ben demands hopelessly, a child begging his mother for direction. The blackout of his impending stroke is simmering at the edges of his awareness. And still Leia’s smile is lopsided, one she learned from her husband.

“With a first step,” she says, like it’s the easiest thing in the world, “and with the courage to accept help.”

Her hand is bright and real in his palm, and he squeezes tight. He understands. She will burn herself out to give him the strength to do this. He isn’t sure he can accept that. He doesn’t know what will become of her, whether she will cease to exist or just bottom out and need to replenish – he doesn’t know the rules for ghosts. He just knows he isn’t worthy of her sacrifice twice in one day.

“That’s for me to decide,” his mother dismisses. “You are my son. You are worthy to me, and you will prove it to yourself when you do what must be done. Now. Stand up.” Her hand burns white hot with the insistence of her passionate personality. It flows into him, still a shadow of what she was and only a fragment of the strength he will need to complete this task but perhaps enough for a first step if he couples it with his own drive. “Ben. Get up.” The murmurs echo her words. He thinks he hears familiar voices. He hears Rey’s name. “Get up.” Everything hurts but the thought of Rey and the reason he came here, knowing full well that he could likely end up this way, flushes through him. The Force follows in its wake. Selfless love is its cleanest gateway. It flows freely from his loving mother to him and back up the canyon wall to where he senses Rey lying alone in the epicentre of the most immense welling of Force energy he has ever encountered. _A thousand generations live in you now_ … “Get _up_.”

With everything he’s got, against every doubt, against every protest of his ruined body, he pulls, and Leia Organa Solo burns white. Above, beyond the unattainable edge from which he fell, there’s a mighty crack, and the Force changes tides. He staggers to his feet, and through what’s left of their tattered bond, he feels Rey do the same.

But before he has his balance, Leia evaporates, the last of her energy given away to him, the unworthy son, and he teeters. His breath catches, his heartbeat skips, his vision clouds, his broken leg gives way, and he starts to fall. Again.

This time it will be over the edge of this narrow landing, and there will be no hope of return.

But Rey is still alone, and even if he’ll be dead before he hits the ground, he’ll sooner go out falling forward, toward her, than back. He has only scraps of life left – he will spend them on getting to her, even if he never will. With what feels like a final flare of determination, he tips his weight forward and prepares.

It’s not over yet. Tipping forward on his shaky legs, his hand falls into a new one, and it burns bright and present in the physical world as it holds him up.

His breath resumes. His heart keeps beating. His vision is restored. And he stands.

“One foot after the other,” Luke Skywalker advises. Like his twin sister, he looks as he did in life, though lit with a soft blue glimmer. The impossible cliff face is visible through his cloak. His hand is bright in Ben’s and he channels himself, his soul, into his nephew. Just enough to keep him upright. Just enough to keep him going. It’s all he has to give and he’s giving it freely. Ben is responsible for his uncle’s death, and he feels that remorse more keenly now than ever before. He does not deserve Luke’s life force. “I know,” the Jedi master says, “you’re sorry. Me too. We share some problematic family traits. Luckily we’ve got eternity to reflect on them.” He raises his eyes to the lightshow overhead. Somewhere, Rey shrieks, and power reverberates throughout the chamber. Stones tumble from the impossible edge and Ben knows he will die before he reaches it. “She doesn’t have that much time. You have to get to her. Remember your training.”

The Supreme Leader is the apprentice again as he stares up the impossible cliff face. “Will it be enough?”

Luke shrugs. “It has to be.”

It has to be. Rey is alone. She is backed by the power of a thousand generations of Jedi but _he_ is not there with her, and he _must_. Leia burned herself out to get him on his feet. Luke slowly dims with the effort of keeping him there. So, worthy or not, Ben Solo takes a shaky step. His body screams, and he feels it crumpling.

But Rey is in need.

The Force rushes in. The pain dulls. His injured spine straightens. He takes a second step, guided by the ghostly hand of his uncle, his mentor, and then a third. His hand meets cold stone, sharp and abrasive, freshly broken. He looks up and his cloudy eyes search for the edge.

It’s so far away. He won’t make it. He doesn’t have the strength. Even Luke doesn’t have the strength. He will fade before Ben makes it halfway in this ruined body he cannot heal.

 _Be with me. Get up. You’re not alone. You are worthy to me_. _Rise_. 

He grasps the stone anyway. Luke withdraws his hand to rest it instead on his nephew’s shoulder. Amiable, affectionate. It’s the way Ben felt from him when he was a child, before his training and his growing darkness undermined their family. His energy runs selflessly into the last Skywalker.

The wrong person.

“You should be with Rey,” Ben insists. He pulls on the rock to test his strength. His shoulder is out. He will not make it, not like this. “She deserves your help more than I do.”

“I _am_ with Rey,” Luke counters. “And I am with you. She needs _you_. Life. Body. Breath. Things I don’t have to offer. Now, _go_.”

Anger with his helplessness briefly burns in Ben’s chest. He’s tempted to follow habit and grab it, use it, but instead he lets it flow straight through. He lets the frustration guide him to slam his shoulder into the rock wall with what little energy he has, and he grunts with the piercing pop of the bone sliding back into its socket. Then the anger’s gone, and he’s whole, or closer to it, and Luke dims. Ben’s life persists. His blood continues to be redirected around the burst vessels in his brain, slowing the bleeding. His breath keeps going. His arm works. He adjusts his grip, and he starts to climb.

“Small steps,” Luke coaches through the pain. Lightning shatters the air over the edge and forks its way even down here where the unworthy fall. The Palpatines battle it out somewhere, energy from millennia of lives lived in service of the Force powering this immense battle. Kylo Ren would be furious. He’d hate to miss out, to not be the one fighting this fight. He would not even care which side he stood on, only that he stood, an icon of power. A conduit so impressive, no one who’d ever scorned him or dismissed him or misunderstood him could ignore.

But Ben Solo aches, and whimpers, and shakes, and slips, and drags himself up the cliff face toward that impossible edge, single-minded. Rey. She must not be alone. She must know he stands with her until his last, and so he pushes on, urged by his uncle until his uncle burns white, and again prepares to give his last with one final unlikely reach–

A giant statue crumbles into the crevice behind him and he slips, and he’d fall, except a bright hand catches his and pulls him back into place.

“We are an unbroken chain,” the glowing old man says gently. His accent is soft, and Ben recognises him from holos as his namesake. A hero. A symbol of integrity and purity. A real leader. “Master to apprentice, father to son, brother to sister, enemy to friend. The Jedi have not passed on their ways and wisdom for all these centuries to die today at the hands of the Sith. We stand together. We stand with you.”

Ben steadies himself against the rock and holds tight to the ghost’s hand. Nervously he looks down. The fall he’s already taken has almost killed him but there’s much further to fall if he doesn’t watch out. Palms sweating, he looks up. He is halfway but the remaining distance looks the same. It’s impossible. The edge is elusive, as is Rey, as is any chance of proving his worth to these heroes of the light.

He is the traitor, a traitor to them all. He is not worthy of their life force. His mother could not be convinced, and neither could his uncle, but a war general can surely be swayed to see the logic of backing the right player.

“Please,” he begs, “help her.”

“Funny,” Obi-Wan Kenobi replies mildly. Far, far below, the statue hits an unseeable floor. “I was about to ask you to do the same.”

“She has to live. She’s the legacy of the Jedi.”

“Oh? And you’re not?”

He releases the younger Ben’s hand and rests his on the sleeve of his tee. His energy, calm and cool, continues to unravel into his apprentice’s grandson as he floats in space beside him. He has no intention of going anywhere. Ben remembers too late that Kenobi died sacrificing himself to Vader to allow his parents and Luke to escape, the day they met. This ghost will not blink at the concept of fading to nothing to save an unworthy brat if he thinks it’s the right thing to do.

“I don’t deserve your hand,” Ben tells the other. Shakily he takes the next stone and pulls with all his might. His body is heavy and unwieldly, but it’s all he has and he has to get it to Rey. He hears her screaming, hears the Emperor screaming, hears the crack and crash of a galaxy falling apart and he can do nothing to stop it, only climb. One foot. One hand. Up, up. “I don’t deserve your name. You don’t know what I’ve done.”

“I do know,” Obi-Wan disagrees. Even he has begun to dim. “I also know what you regret. Over here,” he adds helpfully, pointing out a jutting handhold when the fallen Jedi looks hopelessly about for one. Grateful, he takes it. One hand, one foot, one painful breath, up. “You should know you are not the only one with regrets. You are not the only one to fail the people you love the most. Your master. Your friends. Your order. Your family.” He clasps the back of Ben’s hand firmly when his handhold comes loose, keeping him in place on the sloped rock and preventing yet another fall, at the expense of most of his remaining energy. Making themselves solid burns them faster. The rock slips from Ben’s fingers and falls away, far, far away. Gasping, he flattens himself against the cliff and looks up. The distance is closing but the stable handholds are fewer. Stones and dust tumble into his face. There’s no getting to Rey. It’s hopeless. “We all have our second chances, though.”

Above them, over the edge, there’s an explosion of power, light and dark and everything else blasting outward, and though it’s hopeless, Ben pushes off his broken leg to reach the next crack in the rock. Rey is up there, Rey is alone, Rey is in danger. The facts make him desperate, and desperation gives him drive, and drive draws on energy he doesn’t have. Obi-Wan gives it without restraint until he, too, fades as though to nothing.

The edge draws impossibly close, and up above, the chamber is eerily quiet. Ben feels himself begin to fret, fear creeping in at his own edges.

“What if I’m too late?” he mumbles, the fear thinning his connection to the Force, his awareness of Rey quivering. He stops, not quite at the edge, and sways with light-headedness. To come so close…

He _cannot_ fall now.

 _Rise_.

“What if you get your second chance?” Obi-Wan asks rhetorically, and finishes funnelling his being into Ben’s with a final bright white glimmer. In the breathless afterglow of his departure, the boy that was Kylo Ren looks up at the rim of the crevice, just out of reach. Their energy is a priceless gift, sustenance to his failing body, but it isn’t enough to push him over that edge. The strength and balance to pull his weight up and over, the momentum to ignore his crippling pain all the way to where he left Rey… Already, Kenobi’s power within him is dwindling, used up with keeping his heart pumping and that bleeding under control. Rey’s presence has dropped from his radar, and he’s about to fall again.

_Are you going to lie here and let everything be for nothing? She needs you._

He has exhausted his allies – his mother, his uncle, his namesake – and doesn’t have enough in himself of his own to make this last leg of the climb, but there is no other choice. He spots one last handhold and swings off one arm.

His hand is caught by the most solid grip yet, and he’s held in place, hanging over the smoking crevice he’s just crawled out of.

At the mercy of his own grandfather.

“Do you love her?” Anakin asks bluntly, and Ben’s shoes slip on the rock face. Fear ripples through him. Luke and Leia’s father shines brighter than the others, maybe a testament to his legendary power with the Force. He leaves his misled grandson hanging and channels no energy to preserve him. The aneurysms begin to bleed. His pulse slows down. His pierced organs make themselves known. His fractured leg dangles limply, aching. The ghost of Skywalker still glares into his grandchild’s dark eyes. “Or do you love how she makes you feel about yourself? Powerful. Worthy.”

He’s climbed all this way against all logic, against all possibility, and now to be so close and not even know if she’s survived the battle? Outside, explosions sound in the distance, jet engines shriek, but none of it matters in here. Ben’s idol holds him hostage to his own delusions, and waits for an answer he can’t give. His sight starts to go. His breath becomes shallow and forced. No words will pass his lips.

But with what synapses still work, he thinks desperately _She’s alone_ , because yes, of course he loves her, and to know that she is alone and afraid to be, just over this edge, and he could do something to alleviate that but cannot, is more hurtful than a shattered leg, more crippling than a damaged spine, more world-ending than blood escaping into his brain, ready to switch him off in an instant.

The truth is, it doesn’t matter how she makes him feel. She makes him feel a range of terrible things. Envious. Useless. Angry. Reckless. Small. Worthless. Weak. She also makes him feel any number of wonderful things. Understood. Warm. Seen. Synchronised. Purposeful. And he loves her for all that, and right now she could be lying there dying or hurt or scared, and it only matters how _she_ feels, and how he can help.

 _Be with me_. And he will, however she needs, however she wants, for however long he has. He has come this far with the love and compassion of those who paved his path through the light. He takes his mother’s advice.

“Please help me,” he tries to beg. The words come out slurred, incoherent, but he senses his grandfather’s understanding. His acceptance, and something else like sad irony.

“I know what it is to want the power to save the one you love from dying,” he says as Ben starts to slip away. _Hold on, get up, small steps_ … He tries to hold onto their voices as Anakin talks. “But what if cost all that you have? The power itself? Body? Breath? _Life_.”

He was wrong – his grandfather clearly doesn’t understand. He came here to die for her if he needed to. When Palpatine gave him the ultimatum days ago, he knew it would come to this before he ever took her life. He is here now as Ben Solo to save her. He has gotten to his feet despite mortal wounds, and climbed this cliff to return to her side all because she thought the words _Be with me_. His mother, uncle and namesake have expired themselves to get him here. If it costs body, breath, life to save her, that is what it costs. It is not a greater cost than the alternative.

The thoughts are enough.

“Do what I couldn’t,” Anakin counsels, and in a blinding flash, he is gone, and Ben feels shot through with an intense burst of power. The Force floods him and the pain is shoved back down below the threshold of bearable, and he finds the strength in that second to wrench himself up with his one hand and slam the other down on the edge.

His dangling foot finds a small ledge.

His heart pumps wildly.

His brain holds out, though he doesn’t know how long.

His muscles strain, but he struggles up and over onto the floor of the main chamber, and hears the murmur of those voices in the energetic aftermath of the Palpatine battle.

Everything is uncomfortably quiet.

_Finish what I started._

He looks up and his heart almost stops. Rey lies still, almost where he left her, surrounded by the ruins of the Sith temple and what was the Emperor’s assisted living apparatus. Those shreds of grey behind her might be what’s left of the Emperor himself – he’s nowhere to be seen.

He is overwhelmed with need to be with her like she asked, to know she is alright, and he breaks into a run, but his broken body won’t support it. Instead he staggers on a shattered leg, clutches a wounded torso that bleeds internally where his ribs stab his insides, shudders with every step that jars an injured spine, and blinks through bloodshot eyes full of dust and tears of loss and fear. And in that manner he reaches her, and collapses at her side, and gathers her to himself. A ragdoll, unmoving, and when he touches her face, finds her eyes unseeing.

He is too late. Emperor Palpatine’s treatment of Ben was also exerted on Rey, and like his, her complex and delicate brain has been twisted and crushed under the weight of his power. Precious, life-giving arteries have ruptured and while he was fighting to reach her, she has died. Quickly, quietly, but alone.

 _No_ … He gasps through the devastating truth and waits to be proven wrong, but he isn’t. She has died the death he was waiting for after his fall down that crevice. She is gone and he has missed his second chance. Rey, who deserved better. Rey, who was worthy. A thousand generation of Jedi at her back and she has destroyed the Sith threat, but been lost, too, in the process.

That cost seems too great.

The tears regather on his lashes as he hugs her tightly to his chest. _I am with you,_ he wants to scream. _I came when you called._ He has never held her before, in life; not like this. And he stares into the grey of the dim ruins for untold seconds, wishing he had taken different paths, made choices that would have made their connection one of warmth and resolution instead of conflict and negativity, just so that he might have known before today like her friends surely do how her chin slots perfectly into the groove of his collarbone. So he could have known before her death how perfectly she fits in his lap, wrapped in his arms, his hand cradling the back of her head, and maybe could have done something with that. So he could have known before right now that this is all he’s ever wanted, that everything else he has sought has been a substitute for what she represents, and like his grandfather before him he almost destroyed this in his arrogant, self-serving search for fulfilment.

He knows now why he has always felt unworthy. He knows now why he has felt unsatisfied and unseen. He has been selfish, and he has lost what matters.

He hugs her tightly and breathes her familiar scent. He will never forget the smell of her, whether he lives twenty more seconds on the remaining power of Anakin Skywalker or another thousand years. Slowly he exhales, taking the moment to commit the feel of her to what’s left of his memory, the smell, the sight, everything, and his heart hurts as he relaxes his grip and lowers her to lie in his lap. To see her beautiful shapely eyes, blind in death, is a stab to the chest with one of the blades lying dormant at her sides.

But even that, which should have killed him, she reversed with the power of her life.

Life. Breath. Body. Power. _Everyone has something to give_.

It’s the longest possible shot, but the Force swells in him unexpectedly, and he knows not to doubt that prompt. Above him, the tides are changing in a galactic war that will impact billions of lives, but his attention is here. The Force is with him here. He was brought here. The voices fill his ears. _What if you get your second chance? You are worthy to me. She needs you. Do what I couldn’t. Remember your training. A thousand generations live in you now. We stand with you._

 _Be with me_.

“I’ll always be with you,” his mother’s voice promises, louder and clearer than all the rest, and he’s filled with hope and relief to know that she is not _gone_ , only changed, and waiting where he will soon follow. And it’s with that calm, centred, peaceful certainty that he lays a hand on Rey’s stomach and closes his eyes.

The Force has always come easily to him, though increasingly grindingly so the more he has worked to control it through the dark side. Now it comes organically to his hands, effortless, uncoloured by either the dark side or the light. Raw. His pain and brokenness become nothing. The souls of all those who have come before lend their energetic weight yet again, directing according to what of the process they know. No single Master from the past knows how to restore life from death, he realises, but between them, their knowledge and experience and power pieces together inside Rey. Ben concentrates on healing her injuries – the burst vessels he knew he’d find in her brain – with the last of Anakin’s power, while his spiritual Jedi ancestors perform the magic they knew in life through his hands.

He is _their_ vessel, a conduit for what power the Jedi can no longer wield in this physical world without their bodies, their breath, their life, and he realises what he’s always known is true. He was meant for an unspeakable and glorious purpose. This is it. Now.

There’s a surge as all work as one, and the connection ends. In his arms, Rey gasps and under his hand, her diaphragm expands. Her eyes, beautiful, shapely, blink hard, and the pupils dilate and refocus on his face.

Body, breath, life. She sees him. She didn’t see the struggle but she knows he has returned from his fall over the edge to be here with her and she knows what he has done for her.

“Ben,” she speaks, her lovely voice like music. His head spins with relief and gratification. Not Kylo, not Ren, not Supreme Leader. She sees what he has shed from himself to get here today. She is _here_ ; she too has returned from a fall beyond an impossible edge and been pulled back, one step at a time, by love and compassion and determination to do right. She is _here_ in his arms where a moment ago she lay dead and sightless, and she is instead breathy, warm, _alive_ , and staring into his eyes with amazement. She knows this is a miracle.

She extends the miracle. She runs cool fingertips down the length of his face, like she is memorising him, like he is worthy of memorising. A small, disbelieving smile plays at her mouth, a mouth he has long wanted to know the taste of. They have won, and they are here. Together. She is alive in his arms, and his hands find the curve of her face. She is warm and electric to the touch. Magnetic. He has never imagined he would have cause to hold her like this. He has never been able to conjure up a hypothetical situation in which she allows him this intimacy he craves from her. How, he has always wondered, would he ever earn the right to her touch? How, after all he’s done, would he ever prove himself worthy, when he knows his life has been unforgiveable?

 _That’s for me to decide_. As Anakin’s energy finally departs him, he sees in her eyes that she has decided. He cannot think of a better judge alive. So when she closes the space between them and fulfils his dearest fantasy, accepting him, inviting him, he does not hesitate. He does not let doubt or guilt or self-loathing deter him from meeting her in the middle and pressing his lips to hers in a kiss he has wanted since he met her in the forest and carried her to his ship.

The next seconds are bliss. She tastes like dust and blood and salt and _Rey_ and he cannot get enough of her. Miracle aside, the struggle back to the edge – in all meanings of that phrase – has been worth it just for this chance. Just to hold her. Just to taste her. Just to know in her insistent kisses that she has wanted this chance as desperately as he has.

It’s enchanting, being with her for these few seconds, and distracting enough to forget his shattered leg, his torn insides, his snapped ribs, his damaged spine, his bleeding brain. There was not the energy to heal himself, and the power that’s held him together until now has expired. When their kiss ends and he’s gazing into her sparkling eyes, he realises this is the last thing he will see. Her flushed cheeks. Her plump lips. Her cute freckles.

And this perfect, beautiful being has chosen him.

He almost laughs. She has no idea how incredible she is, this scavenger girl from a forgotten and deadly bloodline with a legacy she is strong enough to shirk, an inspiration to a rebellion, a light so pure and dignified she has drawn Kylo Ren back from the dark side and restored the boy Ben Solo. She has ended the Sith threat and saved the galaxy.

All he got to do was climb a cliff at the continuous brink of death and channel millennia of Jedi expertise and power to revive her.

The cost – body, breath, life, even power – is no cost at all when she is the prize. She will live. She will keep shining. The thought makes him smile like he hasn’t in so many years.

He’s taken by surprise when the stroke hits. He loses his bodily control and falls, though it’s not so big a fall this time, and when he lands on his back, he’s still in Rey’s arms, with the taste of her kiss still on his lips. The edge is only a small slip into a new state, nothing so imposing as a distant impossible cliff face. It’s quick.

They’re all waiting for him. Everyone whose hand he held on his way back to Rey. And others. Everyone is there, beyond the edge. They are proud of him. They welcome him. He belongs.

He proved himself worthy, to them and to himself, one step, one handhold, one rock, one selfless and determined desperate decision at a time.

Ben Solo looks back at Rey in the chamber. His body is gone. His life, his breath. Her grief and shock lay there instead. But she will recover from those. He has made an exchange, and paid a price he knows was fair.

And besides, he understands with sudden certainty, he is only just beyond the edge. Not far. She is not alone, and neither is he. They will see each other again soon, and he will be waiting when it is her turn to take his hand, finally, and join him at his side, where she belongs.


End file.
